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-Short Attention Span Theater-
Are We Going to Kiss HuffPo Goodbye?
2009-10-18
Absolutely fascinating (and somewhat humorous) information about how Arianna's Huffington as well as other websites with political content may be on the ropes. HuffPo may well be gone by late 2010/ early 2011. TFA article also names six other online publications which may hit the brick wall at about the same time.

I recall back in ancient history in 2005 when Ms. Huffinton launched her blog the same year as mine I said then in complete confidence that her $7 million initial seed money I could do the same thing for about one percent of what she received.

Fast forward four years, with five solid regular readers later and I doubt I could do it for $70 million.

From TFA:
The evidence that can be gleaned is that Arianna and her gang of 100 acolytes that "staff" the Po have a burn rate of maybe $1M/month, giving the Po about a 24 month shelf life (from last December, giving them about a year to live ... unless they get a new cash infusion).

The Po was funded, as a business, by a venture capitalist. Not an advocacy site like Center for American Progress. There is zero evidence that the Po is generating, or capable of ever generating anything like $12M a year. (Just a guess, but ... where are the ads???)

Nor is there much evidence that the Po has anything like the political clout of populist bootstrap webspaces like the much less expensive, feisty, DailyKos or the really, really smart Personal Democracy Forum. The Po -- except for the rare columns by Esther Dyson and a few others -- not only is journalistically shoddy -- parajournalism, really -- but is consistently guilty of the most unforgivable crime on the Web.
The crime of being boring. More at the link.
The crime of not having a business plan ...
I think the business plan is to write cool stuff, burn through money, and get the next sugar daddy to pony up. So far it's worked exactly as planned...
Posted by:badanov

#14  How about I just moon 'em?
Posted by: DarthVader   2009-10-18 22:17  

#13  How about I just wave?
Posted by: Richard Aubrey   2009-10-18 20:54  

#12  Link fixed
Posted by: badanov   2009-10-18 18:56  

#11  Thier ranting raving and whining would go un heard in great vacuum that once was PO-land....

Then the crazies will come to rantburg.
Posted by: badanov   2009-10-18 18:54  

#10  "It would be rather amusing if a whole bunch of the Internet's "leading 'progressive' lights" all went dark at once...just as the Donks are getting a mid-term walloping. The tinfoil-hat bunch would absolutely lose it."
The really amusing part of this picture you paint, Mike, is that the 'tin-foil hat bunch' would have to lose it all by themselves; no one to console them as all their wunnerful sites are 'Sea-Ell-Oh-Ess-E-Dee.'
Thier ranting raving and whining would go un heard in great vacuum that once was PO-land....
Posted by: USN, Ret.   2009-10-18 18:43  

#9  What, can't they hit up the same suckers investors that Air America did? Or are they all tapped out?
Posted by: Cornsilk Blondie   2009-10-18 18:35  

#8  Can has new link BadMan?
Posted by: .5MT   2009-10-18 18:30  

#7  Can we shoot them, like we do other rabid animals?
Posted by: Old Patriot   2009-10-18 18:10  

#6  "Are We Going to Kiss HuffPo Goodbye?"

Not in a million years. I don't have any venereal diseases - and intend to keep it that way.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2009-10-18 17:51  

#5  *bad greek "southern" imitation*

"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers"


/"Willing to change sides, positions, complete ideologies, as long as I can have Faaaabulous parties" Huffington
Posted by: Frank G   2009-10-18 17:43  

#4  Sounds like someone's setting to seek for a bailout.
Posted by: CrazyFool   2009-10-18 17:15  

#3  Are We Going to Kiss HuffPo Goodbye?

Is this a trick question?
Posted by: gorb   2009-10-18 17:08  

#2  It will be sweet irony, will it not, if what brings down the anti-capitalists is the lack of capital.
Posted by: Jumbo Slinerong5015   2009-10-18 15:56  

#1  It would be rather amusing if a whole bunch of the Internet's "leading 'progressive' lights" all went dark at once...just as the Donks are getting a mid-term walloping. The tinfoil-hat bunch would absolutely lose it.
Posted by: Mike   2009-10-18 15:43  

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